The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1887-03-12

postal cards one has only to climb up
to the highest building on the hill,
where, in back room, crowd of girls
sort the rags that have just come in from
the different rag collectors. The girls
cut off all the buttons, take off the
buckles and sort out the rags. The
sorted rags are placed in chopping
machine which treats them like sausage
neat, and after making the old dresses
md trousers into little squares and tri-
lngles too small for even a baby's crazy
1uilt, it whiffs them into another ma
chine, where the dust is shaken out of
hem and they are cleaned. From that
IN the life of the rags is a succession Of
paths in chloride of lime and other
bleaching and cleansing chemicals, with
occasional visits to vats and trips through
sets of sharp knives and fine toothed
rollers. Finally the many colored rags
come out in a nice white mush that looks
like thin flour paste. This is shaken
over wire to get the water out ofit, and
put through few score rollers and a
/ glue bath before it comes out as postal
card paper.
AT the end of the long rolls that have
been squeezing it down thin enoug h and
putting the pale gloss on the long sheet
of postal card paper, several yards wide,
is either cut up into sheets 81 by 3oH
inches or it is rolled up, four postal
cards wide, to be put on the automatic
presses that print from roll. Each
sheet will soon be forty postal cards.
When the paper has been calendered it
is taken from the paper mill few feet
to the postal card factory. In the big
room of the postal card factory are a
dozen men, two dozen girls, large
Campbell press, boxes, large tables and
web of gearing and belts overhead.
The sheets are taken to the press, where
two feeders feed forty-two sheets min
ute-1,7 100 postal cards every sixty Sec
onds. The postal cards are printed
from steel plates so hard that there is
not file in the factory that will make
an impression on them. Each card has
seperate steel plate, and the eighty
that are needed to make the impressions
on the two sheets are wedged in the bed
of the press. The plates come from
Washington, and last two years without
renewal.
The sheet of postal cards are carried
from the press few feet to the feeders,
who are women with long experience at
their work. They are paid forty-one
and one-half cents per 100, 700, and can
feed from 500, 900 to 600, 900 day.
The sheets as they come to the feeders
have previously been cut into long slips
one card wide and ten long. The wo'
men feed then through another cutter
that turns taem out seperate cards
Three girls take the cards from one feed
er, one gil counts them to see that
twenty-five are in one package, and the
other two put paper binders around the
packages. In a press feeder feed:
double, or two sheets at time, and car
feed four sheets at time.
After leaving the girls at the feeding
machines the postal cards are in bundles
ready for sale, just as they look in
country post-ofice. But before ship
ment they are boxed. Twenty package
of twenty-five each are put in a paste
board box that by contract must be mus
lin bound. Five girls put on the mus
lin binding and are paid fifteen cent
for binding 100 boxes. Other girls taxi
the packages of cards and put them il
the boxes, which are then ready for ship
ment. No smaller order than 500 i
filled. Orders of 10, 900 and over ar
put in wooden cases, the largest singl
package being box that holds $500
cards.
This is the old way of making tn
cards, but when the company took tn